Education & Learning – Scripturient

Bring Back the Salons

Today if someone mentions a “salon” you probably think about a haircut or manicure. But in the 18th century, prior to the French Revolution, salons were the focus of civil debate, intellectual curiosity, and culture. They were centres of discussion on everything from manners to literature to philosophy to science. And they were run by women. Salons were the bright stars of the Enlightenment; cauldrons of intellectual, cultural, and social development. More than ever, we need a salon culture today. Social media is driving us … click below for more ↓

The day that reason died

2020-08-06 2020-08-06 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Creationism / Critical Thinking / Education & Learning / Internet & Social Media / New Age Codswallop / Political fads / Politics / Pseudoscience & Quackery / US PoliticsLeave a comment

I’m not a believer in alien visitations and UFOs, but I’ll bet if an alien did swing by, after an hour or two observing us, checking out Facebook or Twitter, they’d lock their doors, hang a detour sign around our planet, and race off. They’d tell their friends not to visit us because we were all nuts. Scarily, dangerously crazy. Seriously. What sort of world can be called civilized when it has people touting — and believing — homeopathy? Reiki? Chemtrails? Anti-vaccination screeds? Anti-mask whines … click below for more ↓

Politically correct pronoun madness

2016-10-31 2019-02-10 Critical Thinking / Culture / Education & Learning / Language & Grammar / Media Issues / Politics / Social Order & Disorder / Style & usage7 Comments

Ze, zim, zer, zher, zis, mer, hus, shkle, hum, herm, hann, ey, hu, je, xe, per, thon, yo, ghaH, co, e. Know what these words are? They are artificial constructs: neologisms cobbled together for abstruse political correctness to replace traditional pronouns that expose or define a gender in the subject or object of a sentence: the traditional he, him, she, her and so on. They’re sometimes called Spivak pronouns after an American mathematician who coined some of them, but there are many more than he … click below for more ↓

The Continued Rise of Anti-Intellectualism

2015-07-02 2015-07-02 Critical Thinking / Education & Learning / Politics / Social Order & Disorder / US Politics8 Comments

I dream of a world where the truth is what shapes people’s politics, rather than politics shaping what people think is true. Neil deGrasse Tyson on Twitter* Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America, says the headline in this recent Psychology Today story. The subtitle reads: Social dysfunction can be traced to the abandonment of reason. I wrote about anti-intellectualism as the new elitism back in late 2013. Since then, it seem the trend has not only increased dramatically, but the backlash against it has grown. However, the opposition trying to restore … click below for more ↓

Reading music and music theory

2014-05-04 2014-05-06 Culture / Education & Learning / Music & Reviews / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

I write about reading a lot, because I read a lot of books. There are other kinds of reading – other languages, too – that I don’t write much about. Reading music is one of them. It’s a different language; a symbolic language with its own grammar, punctuation and rules. As far as reading music goes, I’m semi-illiterate. I’ve been playing music – guitar mostly – since the Beatles had Ticket To Ride on the hit parade, back in the days of AM radio and … click below for more ↓

Marcus Aurelius

2014-03-21 2014-03-21 Arts / Books & Reviews / Education & Learning / Philosophy / What I'm Reading Now3 Comments

I continue to be profoundly moved by the wisdom of the classical authors. It’s often hard to accept that some of them were writing two or more millennia ago: many seem so contemporary they could have been written this century. Of late – within the past year or so – I’ve been reading Lucretius, Aristotle, Horace, Cicero, Seneca, Pliny the Elder*… and more recently Marcus Aurelius. I’ve had a couple of versions of his Meditations (written ca. 167 CE) kicking around on my bookshelf for decades. … click below for more ↓

What’s in a missing word?

2014-03-11 2014-03-15 Books & Reviews / Education & Learning / Language & Grammar / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

There’s a line in one of Horace’s epistles that really caught my eye. In Latin it reads: Utque sacerdotis fugitiuus liba recuso, pane egeo iam mellitis potiore placentis Horace: Epistles, Book I, X No, I can’t translate it.* However, I was reading David Ferry’s 2001 translation and he renders it like this: I’m like that slave who ran away because They fed him honey cakes and he longed for bread. That appealled to me both for my recent passion for making bread, but also for … click below for more ↓

Reading: A Canadian tragedy… or not?

2014-03-02 2014-03-02 Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Culture / Education & Learning / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

The map above might show the making of a serious tragedy for Western and especially Canadian culture. It indicates in colour which nations read the most. Yellow is the second lowest group. Canada is coloured yellow. In this survey, Canada ranks 10th – from the bottom! Twenty countries above us have populations which, on the average, read more per week than we do. That surprises and shocks me. And it disappoints me no end. I’m not only a voracious reader, I’m passionate about books, language, … click below for more ↓

Lucretius and the Renaissance

2014-02-23 2014-02-23 Arts / Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Education & Learning / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

It’s fairly clear, even after reading only a few verses, why Lucretius’s didactic poem, On the Nature of Things – De Rerum Natura – made such an impact on thought, philosophy, religion and science in the Renaissance. It must have been like a lighthouse in the dark night; a “Eureka” moment for many of the age’s thinkers. For others, especially the church leaders, it must have arrived like a mortar shell among their intellectual certainties and complacencies; shattering walls and window. An act of war that threatened … click below for more ↓

Amo, Amas, Amat…. and what?

2014-02-14 2014-02-14 Books & Reviews / Education & Learning / Language & Grammar / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

My well-thumbed copy of Eugene Ehrlich’s book, Amo, Amas, Amat and More, is dated 1985. It’s amusingly subtitled “How to Use Latin to Your Own Advantage and to the Astonishment of Others.” It’s still in print, it seems, or was as recently as 2006. I’ve read my copy on and off for the past 25-plus years, but have not been able to effectively astonish anyone with my grasp of Latin. Possibly the reason for this is that my grasp of Latin is small. Very small. … click below for more ↓

Feb. 12: Happy Darwin Day

2014-02-11 2014-02-11 Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Education & Learning / Science & Technology2 Comments

February 12 is international Darwin Day, the day when we collectively celebrate science and reason. And, of course, we recognize Charles Darwin’s birthday: February 12, 1809 (the same birthdate as Abraham Lincoln, by the way). If Collingwood made such declarations, I would propose we recognize the day in our municipality. Other Canadian municipalities have done so. Maybe we could raise a flag with Darwin’s face on it outside town hall. Darwin Day was first celebrated in 1995 and has been growing in recognition and popularity … click below for more ↓

The Eyes Have It

2013-10-05 2013-10-05 Education & Learning / Personal Reminiscences / Psychology & Sociology / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

This summer my mother was diagnosed with macular degeneration. There is no cure. It is irreversible. It simply progresses. Science has some hope for future cures, and has some treatments to slow the progress, but a cure likely won’t come soon enough for her. At 93, one expects that the body will fail, that organs and parts won’t work as well, will lose efficiency, will fail. But this is particularly tough on her. It was clear during our visit today that this diagnosis troubles her. … click below for more ↓